Dead Lover is a concoction so enchantingly, joyfully repulsive it is destined to become, at minimum, a cult classic.

Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie, relatively young Canadian filmmakers whose previous work (Her Friend Adam, The Heirloom, to name but a couple) already puts them at or near the top of their respective creative class, reveal here that they are capable of anything. If their ideas aren’t actually boundless, they feel that way. Glowicki, here, handling the reins for the second time after 2019’s intriguing Tito, proves not only that she has great taste in music (Toronto-based U.S. Girls provide the soundtrack), cinematography (Rhayne Vermette), editing (Lev Lewis), set design, and character (she and Petrie co-write), but that she now has the confidence to see those tastes through — all the way to their most extreme, as long as that extremity serves the narrative or aesthetic of this intensely stylized little film.

Based loosely on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Dead Lover follows a lonesome, abhorrently stinky Gravedigger (Glowicki). She is infamous thanks to her stench and to her macabre profession, and the population, at best, puts up with her every time they need a burial. Gravedigger keeps her distance, speaks to her corpses, and yearns for more.

One night, she finds it. As she digs a grave for a recently deceased young woman, she meets her surviving family; amongst them is the woman’s brother (Petrie, in one of at least five roles). He, like all the others, is taken aback by Gravedigger’s foul funk, her penchant for flatulence. But then it occurs to him: Perhaps he likes it. In fact, he can’t get enough of it. Gravedigger and the brother spend dizzying, bafflingly disgusting nights of love and worship together (“I want to eat… your… poo! Like a banana!”), until, brought on by the immense guilt he feels, knowing he’s incapable of producing children, the brother steals away in the middle of the night, leaving Gravedigger only a single note, explaining such. Eventually, he writes again, and again, and again. Until finally the letters stop, and she receives word that her lover passed away during a voyage at sea. Scared to be alone, and certain she’s destined to be with him one way or another, Gravedigger resolves to resurrect — somehow, some way — her dead lover.

Do not take lightly the warning above that the film is disgusting. It is, at times, truly revolting, and, more disturbingly, once in a while it feels like we are not in on the joke, but that the joke is on us. Is that fun? It depends on the kind of horror one enjoys. Fans of body horror who feel like, at best, The Substance serves as a gateway to more intense, truer representations of the genre will find a lot to love, including the poking and prodding. If wondering what Glowicki, Petrie, and co. can show us to make us cover our eyes, or maybe even plug our ears, is something you find yourself doing often, then Dead Lover is for you, and you are for Dead Lover.

For all its gothic, melodramatic heights, ghoulish aesthetic, and aforementioned toilet humour, it is, at its heart, a vividly realized romance. Was the original Doctor Frankenstein in love with his Monster? Maybe, but not in the overtly, traditionally romantic way Gravedigger loves the brother.

Dead Lover begs for countless comparisons, and yet comes away with an identity completely its own. It is presented the way one imagines the inside of a child’s mind as they play make-believe. Relatedly, the influences most overtly on display are those of childrens’ TV shows, and relatively innocent series that prioritize physical comedy and anachronistic, unorthodox, in-your-face editing. Shows like the Big Comfy Couch or The Three Stooges, where the movement and sounds are meant to be funny, and-or attention-grabbing, but, often, end up uncanny, is exactly the point where Dead Lover plants its nasty flag. There are Lynchian, Eraserhead elements, and even Shakespearean, borderline Poe-esque rhyming couplets.  

Whether or not Dead Lover becomes a cult classic is ultimately less important than its immediate, obvious role as the point in time Grace Glowicki took a gigantic artistic leap forward.

Dead Lover premieres Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 11:59pm at the Royal Alexandra Theatre as part of the 2025  Toronto International Film Festival. 

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